There’s a reason why we have the adage that the truth hurts.

Which can be used in reference to many things, like when a livestreamer jokingly suggests that everyone in chat is single, which ends up being largely true and leading to many of them receiving “emotional damage”, or when someone calls a woman “flat-chested”. In addition to not always referring to cases where a person is delusional, self-deceptive, or claiming a falsehood or something, it doesn’t always justify saying the truth to begin with. It can also be used to suggest that just because something is true doesn’t mean it should be said.

Also, there are a lot of adages, many of which contradict some other adage. That we have an adage about something doesn’t really mean that much.

Physical reality is not kind to people who believe lies about it.

We’re not just talking about whether a transwoman is a man or woman (or whether a transman is a man or a woman) right now. We’re talking about deadnaming. That particular issue isn’t about anything that even conceivably is about self-deception or affirming falsehoods, even by your standards of what is true. This is about bringing up something from the past about someone that is irrelevant and is rude and/or harmful to the subject: their previous name.

Here are some somewhat (though not perfectly) analogous examples to give you an idea:

1. A woman gets married to a man and takes his last name (as is customary). The man ends up doing something horrible that leads to the woman divorcing from him. Understandably, the woman wants to get rid of anything having to do with the man, including changing her last name back to her maiden name, so she does so. She is also, quite reasonably, upset when people continue to refer to her by her ex-husband’s last name or mention, for no real reason, that her last name had ever been anything else, even though the latter would be true.
2. Someone was born and raised into a cult that has some strict traditions about names. This person ends up escaping the cult and wants to forget about their past in the cult, so they change their name. Again, they would understandably be unhappy if someone brings up their previous name and would prefer to just forget that they ever had that name.
3. A set of parents want a son but end up only having a daughter. However, in semi-denial of this (or due to a misunderstanding or something), they end up giving her a very masculine name. When she gets older, she changes her name to something far more feminine (or at least something not gender-specific, like “Drew”). She doesn’t want to think about her previous name.

There are others as well, but I don’t want to belabor the point too much. The point is that whether something is true or not is not dispositive of whether or not it should be said.

A Superman costume does not let a man fly wh[en] he jumps out the window.

It has already been pointed out to you that this is inapt and why. Transgender people aren’t delusional, and they aren’t making claims that are physically impossible.

A woman costume does not turn a man into a woman.

Nobody claims that it does. Again, transgender people do not claim that a man can turn into a woman at all. They claim that a male body can house a woman’s mind (which appears to be true), and that it is possible for many such people to present sufficiently feminine as to appear to be women and, to a lesser extent in some cases, female for most intents and purposes.

I know you don’t agree that sex and gender (and, thus, male and man as well as female and woman) are distinct concepts, but we’re talking about someone’s claims and beliefs and how they correspond to physical reality. The definitions of terms like “sex”, “gender”, “male”, “man”, “female”, and “women” are not themselves physical reality even if some or all of them are used to describe physical reality, so having a different definition from yours for some or all of these terms cannot itself be contradicted by physical reality. As far as the claimants are concerned, their definitions are valid, so when analyzing their claims, choosing to ignore what they are actually saying and instead of evaluating the claims on their own terms is indicative of either ignorance or bad faith. As for presenting as women/female, I doubt that even you would disagree that some transwomen can, indeed, appear in such a way that they appear virtually indistinguishable from most ciswomen in most situations, so you cannot now argue that that is false.

Transgender do not—as a rule—claim that they have or can change from a man to a woman or vice versa, and what they do claim is entirely consistent with physical reality as best as we can tell. I ask that you drop this strawman because it is not a claim that is actually being made by either side.

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